Faculty

Miya Natsuhara is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Miya received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, and a minor in American Sign Language (ASL) from UW in 2018. She graduated with her Masters of Science in Computer Science in 2020 from UW.

After graduating, Miya spent about two years as a Software Engineer on the Visual C++ Libraries team at Microsoft, working on the Visual C++ Standard Library, implementing C++20 features, and maintaining the Active Template Library (ATL).

While working as a Software Engineer, Miya also began teaching part-time in the Allen School as an instructor in Spring 2021. In Autumn 2022, she left Microsoft and began teaching in the Allen School as a full-time instructor. In June 2023, she became an Assistant Teaching Professor and member of faculty in the Allen School.

Miya has primarily been teaching the Introduction to Programming courses at UW (CSE 142, CSE 121, CSE 122) and related courses (e.g., CSE 190Y). During her time as a student, she was also an undergraduate Teaching Assistant for CSE 142 for several quarters, and taught the course as the instructor once as a graduate student in Summer 2019.

Miya also collaborated with a group of other instructors and Teaching Assistants to develop the schedule, curriculum, and policies for the courses CSE 121, 122, and 123 which were launched in the 2022-23 academic year with the intent to replace CSE 142 and 143. This effort was also focused on incorporating socio-technical issues and reflection into curriculum, provide scaffolding to better accommodate students from various backgrounds, and ensure that our materials are accessible for students with a variety of abilities.

During her time at Microsoft, she also participated as a mentor in the pilot of the Microsoft Tech Resilience Mentoring Program, which provided structured mentorship to CS 1 and 2 students at various universities, focusing on topics to increase their “tech resilience” such as metacognition, growth mindset, recognizing discomfort, sense of belonging, and self-efficacy. She also helped design and deliver trainings to mentors as a mentor coordinator in later offerings.